Philip Yancey

Life in a Bubble

The school's emphasis on the "victorious Christian life" led to another danger Jesus warned the Pharisees about: a two-tiered spirituality. Adolescents who barely perceived themselves as independent moral beings, who had barely lived, competed to "lay it all on the altar," to experience "a deeper walk in the Spirit." If someone lacked the proper zeal—a parent or sibling back home, for instance, or a suspect fellow-student like me—the anxious question arose, "Do they really know the Lord?" The writings of C. S. Lewis, a lifeline of faith for me, were frowned upon because Lewis smoked a pipe and drank beer.

The school held a mandatory chapel service daily, required a personal quiet time of Bible study and prayer each morning—a loudly clanging bell woke us at 6 AM—and scheduled quarterly prayer days. Students learned that praying and giving testimonies in public presented the best opportunity to rise in status by displaying one's spiritual intensity. Thus my roommate confessed wild sins I knew he had not committed. One female student lived a double life for seven months, convincing many that she had terminal cancer. The artificial and the authentic became indistinguishable—Jesus' point about the Pharisees, exactly.

A friend of mine got called into the dean's office for wearing a coat hemmed higher than her regulation-length skirt. "Joyce, what are we going to do with you!" she was reprimanded, as if she had broken one of the Ten Commandments. Another time she wore a robe down the hall of the women's dorm with the bottom button undone. The dean shook her head: "Joyce, how can we trust you? If you fail in a thing like this, how can God use you?" Later, that same student was working in the dean of women's office as Valentine's Day approached. She witnessed the bizarre scene of her boss in white gloves censoring one by one the tiny heart-shaped candies to be used as decorations for a party. You're mine, Friends forever, Be my Valentine passed muster; Cutie pie, Hot lips, Love ya went right into the trash can.

Readers who write protesting my unfair caricatures emphasize the wholesome sense of community that such an institution fosters. I agree. What state university imparts such positive values to its students and provides such a supportive community? On holidays we would step outside the bubble and find a world cavorting nude onstage, burning bras and draft cards, bombing campus buildings, tripping on LSD. Assassins killed King, then Kennedy. Ghetto-dwellers rioted. Soldiers shot students at Kent State. Then we returned to a safe, orderly world, a control-based community that measured skirts and hair and debated hyper-Calvinism.

Once I tried to explain the rationale for rules at Christian colleges to Frederick Buechner, who was encountering a much milder version of them for the first time as a visiting professor at Wheaton College. I began with the moral argument, and had to agree with his response that, unlike Wheaton, the Bible did not specifically forbid drinking, smoking, and social dancing. I mentioned the doctrine of in loco parentis, in which schools take over responsibility from parents. Bob Jones Sr. used to promote his school as a place where "parents can send their children and go to sleep at night knowing their children are safe physically, mentally, and spiritually."

Buechner contemplated this line of reasoning. "Yes, but these kids are twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two," he said at last. "Legally, they're adults." The only rationale that made sense to Buechner was the slippery-slope argument. Had not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Oberlin begun with the same commitment as Wheaton? "Everyone shall consider the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life," proclaimed the original rule book at Harvard. "Cursed be all learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ," wrote the first president of Princeton. Question the universal flood or the crossing of the Red Sea and before long Jesus' miracles and the Resurrection are under assault. Permit hand-holding and one day they'll demand open dorms.

Shockingly, during my junior year the college hired a sociologist who had been educated at Harvard, and his classes helped me to step outside the bubble and view the Bible college as a subculture. Following the model of "total institutions" described by Erving Goffman, I saw that the school was using tried-and-true control mechanisms to impart to us spiritual values. The dean of men admitted that he favored retaining some irrational rules in order to teach the students to obey. To me, that sounded like the technique Marine sergeants use. Making a bed so tight that coins bounce off it and polishing shoes so bright that they reflect the sergeant's face do not further a recruit's ability to conduct war. They do, however, reinforce an important military principle: "I am boss and you are not, so you must do what I say."

Jan, I recently read Francis Schaeffer's book, The Great Evangelical Disaster. It helped me think through and gain some clarity on the issues you bring up. I highly recommend it.

Jan

September 15, 20104:28pm

I grew up in an environment similar to what Yancey describes. I also grew up unaware that I had the idea and attitude that I could "do" Christianity. Just give me the rules, and I could be a good Christian. I had to fall hard before I really realized what salvation and justification before God was all about. But here is the problem I see with where the pendulum has swung today. Today we yell "GRACE" and yes to it and claim we want to be "relevant" to the point that we chuck holiness. We want to be like the world to the point where no one can tell the difference because there is no difference. Holiness can not be taught through rules and cultic mind control, but Jesus truly ought to make a difference in our lives and what I see today really confuses me. Is it really OK for me to put up slutty looking pics on FB as long as I press "like" for every "I love Jesus" app and put in my time at the soup kitchen? What is sanctification and what does it look like anyway?

Chuck Roberts

September 15, 20103:22pm

Dave, I think Yancey still has some important things to say about his experience, one reason being that there's still a lot of this mindset out there and it needs to be challenged. It's not the heart of Christianity. I would also suggest that, while I don't think Yancey needs to "move on" he does seem to be in a far different place writing this than he was even when he wrote The Jesus I Never Knew and What's So Amazing About Grace, both excellent books. Frederick Buechner, in several different books, talks about one of, maybe the most, forming events of his life, the suicide of his father when Buechner was 10. I would never tell him to move on because there are deeper and deeper layers he is processing for our good--and helping us to process as we're reading--and i think Yancey is doing the same thing.
(Susan, he's not talking about Tennessee Temple, but there are similarities, to be sure).

Tim Manzer

September 15, 20101:21pm

I was moved by the article. In the late 70's at a small Christian college in the Midwest, I lived out this story. I got in trouble for listening to Christian bands. Listening Randy Stonehill's music was the height of rebellion. I rebelled one weekend by going to the movies. I watched Chariots of Fire. So very evil!
I am thankful for the someone being willing to dialog on the painful time in my life. I must never go back!

Susan McCurdy

September 15, 20101:09pm

I enjoyed the article. I, too, went to Tennesee Temple University, a school much like the one described (maybe even the one described). However, having come from a home with the same rules it didn't bother me so much. I loved the school and the things I learned there! Just because some pharisaical type people exsist in some places doesn't mean they all lack an understanding of grace. Adhering to institutional rules doesn't mean you're a sinner if you don't embrace those rules after graduation. It also doesn't make you a Pharisee if you obey them while there. It makes you submissive to the authority that is over you at that time. That's one principle many people could afford to learn these days. Some, more liberal institutions have chosen to throw out the baby with the bath water. I'm glad for places who still are distinctively Christian.

Judy Whitehouse

September 15, 201012:44pm

Thanks Mr. Yancey...................
YES on the GRACE! And in what ways are we "in the bubble" of the church equally non relelvant to the unchurched. How we are so holy as to blaspheme Jesus who rubbed shoulders with regular humans. God help us!